IT looks as if the judges of the U.S. economy are getting close to declaring a recession.

This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who has been reading this column. We started sinking last year after the wealth that was artificially created by the stock market bubble and the Internet craze started draining out of the economy.

But officially we are not in a recession.

The honor of making that proclamation resides with the National Bureau of Economic Research, a private Cambridge, Mass., think tank that was founded in 1920 and has been umpiring the economy ever since.

Hardly anyone has seen it yet, but two weeks ago Robert Hall, the head of the NBER, wrote that “the data normally considered by the committee indicate the possibility that a recession began recently.”

Hall’s note on the official NBER Web site added that there wasn’t enough data yet to officially declare a recession and that even if there were, there is usually a wait of six months before making a declaration.

But there have been three months of bad employment news.

And there’s evidence that the job market is even worse off.

For instance, the U.S. has fewer jobs right now than a year ago.

According to Washington’s survey of American households, there are 135.9 million jobs right now. Last June there were 136.2 million.

Add to that the fact that industrial production is down 3.9 percent from the peak that occurred last September, and we are getting very close to a recession being officially declared.

Wall Street and the public are going to be surprised then, mainly because the media has been misinforming them about the criteria.

Common wisdom is that a recession is declared only after two quarters of economic contraction. Since we have not even had one yet – mainly because inflation figures have been manipulated – the wise guys figure they have at least six months before they even have to worry about the matter.

Not true.

Also missed by almost everyone is that the NBER went out of its way recently to debunk the myth that two quarters of contractions equals a recession. Instead, the group offers this definition: “A recession is a significant decline in [economic] activity spread across the country, lasting more than a few months, visible in industrial production, employment, real income and trade.”

The economy right now clearly fits the NBER’s recession description.

But doesn’t a lot have to be done before a recession can be declared?

Nope. Hall and the other five members of the NBER committee get on the phone with each other, throw some numbers around and say, “We have a recession.” No muss, no fuss.

But stating that obvious conclusion isn’t the thing workers, consumers and investors should be fretting about right now. The biggest fear should be that after six interest-rate cuts, the economy and the financial markets are not responding.

With Friday’s big losses, the Dow Jones industrial average is now down 4.5 percent for the year. And the Nasdaq – which should be very receptive to the cuts in borrowing costs – is down an incredible 18 percent on top of last year’s declines.

Corporate profits are, of course, to blame.

Wall Street now realizes two things. First, it has to get past this quarter’s drop in profits before things can look up. And, second, it was probably too optimistic for the rest of the year’s results.

Lie No. 5 that I warned you about was that one your broker is telling you: The market is safe. It clearly isn’t.

Stocks are still wildly overpriced and nobody – not even the Fed – seems capable of riding to Wall Street’s rescue.